Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/54

 44 ^/^^ Dasahra :

the horns, daubed with patches of red paint, are hung on the shrine, as Dr. Oldfield thinks, more as a tribute of respect than as an offering. But certain Himalayan tribes place skulls of animals outside their dwellings, and these are probably intended less as trophies than as charms against evil spirits.^'

To quote Dr. Oldfield : " On an occasion like the Dassera, when thousands of animals are sacrificed in one day, the scene at any popular temple is very disgusting. The priests' robes and faces and hands are covered with blood ; the shrine itself, the approaches to it, the gutters running from it are streaming with blood ; while the groans, cries, and struggles of the still living victims, mingled with the angry altercations and upraised voice of the operating officials, the monotonous mutterings of prayer-makers, the ringing of bells to drive away evil spirits, and lastly, but not least, the mutilated and still bleeding carcases of the recently-slaughtered victims lying about on all sides, make up a scene of savage brutality which is not easily to be forgotten, and which is all the more repulsive from its being looked on by all concerned in it as being a necessary and most meritorious part of their religion. Jang Bahadur told me that during the Dassera about nine thousand buffaloes were slaughtered for one purpose or other in Nipal. This is, I think, an exaggeration ; but there is no doubt that the number of animals killed is enormous." ^^^

In like manner, at the Durga Puja in Bengal the wor- shipper is directed to take a drop of the blood of a sacrificed goat, and rubbing it on his forehead, to recite the charm : " Om ! May those whom I touch with my feet,^ those whom I can see with my eyes be subdued by me if they be my enemies ! " ^^

""L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (1895), p. 484; cf. J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. i. (1908), p. 499. "** Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 349 sq. ^^ Pratapachtindra Ghosha, op. cit. p. 66. The word Oni, of which many